Marine vessels often tie up to anchored mooring buoys at beaches, lakes, harbors, or similar sheltered mooring areas. The usual connection between vessel and buoy consists of a mooring line, which ensures that the vessel remains secured to the buoy. However, tide, wave, and wind conditions will cause the moored vessel to float around and about the buoy and, inevitably, will compel the hull of the vessel to come into contact with the buoy. Significant noise and vessel damage is often the result of hull to buoy contact. At the very least, vessel hulls become scraped and marred due to impact with mooring buoys. Also, as a result of the moored vessel floating around and about the buoy, the vessel's mooring lines will inevitably become entangled around the buoy's anchor chain.
Protective buoy covers, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,438,616, have been suggested. However, such covers are designed to be permanently installed over buoys. These covers eventually will deteriorate and generally lose their effectiveness. As a practical matter, such covers are cumbersome to install and, as a practical matter, can not possibly be placed on the myriad of vessel mooring buoys in use today. The solution is a protective buoy cover which can be carried as part of the vessel's equipment and which can be deployed when needed.
However, there is currently no protection device which is designed to be portable and stored onboard a vessel and which can be deployed from the vessel, while the vessel is actually moored to a buoy.